Jeanie Hannaman

By John Mac Ghlionn, Crisis Magazine - It’s an old Catholic habit, this romanticizing of suffering. Somewhere between St. Francis stripping naked in the square and the endless talk of “blessed are the meek,” the Church began confusing destitution with decency, as if the less you own, the more your soul shines. It’s a comforting fantasy, especially for those sitting in marble halls. But equating poverty with purity is as false as equating wealth with wickedness. The poor can be cruel, the rich can be kind, and goodness cannot be measured by one’s bank balance or battered boots.

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - Every now and then, when I have trouble choosing a topic for commentary, I consult the CatholicCulture archives, to see what I was writing five or ten or fifteen years ago around this time of year. So it was that today I found a piece that I had written in October 2017: The crisis of pastoral leadership... That article, in turn, was prompted by a message from a friend, a priest in a relatively strong American diocese, who complained about the sort of directives he received from the chancery. “Everything is administrative, psychological, or sociological—or simply problem-avoidance,” he said. “Very little is religious or truly pastoral, stressing the urgency of the salvation of souls.”